Bping (pronounced "beeping") is a Windows ping alternative that beeps whenever it gets replies. I spend a lot of time diving under desks fiddling with network cables and got tired of looking up at the monitor to see how my pings were doing, and thus bping was born.

Has a bunch of enhancements over the regular ping.exe:

- beeps! (but you already knew that). The default sound is from Space Invaders, or you can specify a wav file to play, or use the system speaker. By default it beeps when it gets a response, but it can also beep only when it doesn't.

- can function as an internet connection tester. Just run "bping" with no commandline arguments and it'll keep testing your internet connection. This is by far my favorite usage for it.

- can scan an entire network and tell you at a glance what IP addresses are available and which are taken. See the screenshot below to see what this looks like. My second favorite usage for Bping.

-Note that it doesn't replace the regular ping.exe, just type "bping" instead of "ping" whenever you want to use bping. To use, download, unzip and run. I works well in the c:\windows directory, but placing it in c:\windows\system32 doesn't work on some systems.

A note for Windows 7/8/10 users: for myseterious reasons Microsoft requires admin rights for access to the networking stack in Win 7/8/10, so you'll need to set Bping to run as admin. You can make that change permanent by right-clicking it and choosing Properties -> Compatibility, then check "run as admin".

And on the off-chance you're still using Vista, fear not, Bping works well under Vista, but you may need to put it into XP Compatibility Mode. Right click the file, choose Properties, then Compatibility, then check XP Service Pack 2.

Usage notes:

-h

Shows a help message and version information.

-q

Quiet mode. In other words, suppress the beep.

-i

Use the computer's internal speaker instead of the regular beep sound.

-v

Volume. For example, v=1 will be very quiet. This can be some number between 1 and 10.

-d

Down. Only beep if the ping fails. Sort of the inverse of the regular behavior. Useful if you're checking for intermittent timeouts.

-f

Specify a wave file to play instead of the stock sound. The volume switch has no effect on this.

-t

Lets you set the timeout. By default this is .8 seconds, but you can set it however you want. For example bping 192.168.1.1 -t=.02 will ping 192.168.1.1 with a timeout of .02 seconds.

-s

Scan the network. For example, bping 192.168. 1.1 -s will scan the network 192.168.1.X and show all replies it gets. Note that you could also type bping 192.168.1.x -s or bping 192.168.1 -s

-a

When scanning the network, adding -a will show which IP addresses are available in a network range. For example, bping 192.168.1.1 -s -a will scan the 192.168.1.X network and show available IP addresses

-r

Attempt to resolve hostnames of IP address. Works in both regular ping mode and scan mode. Handy dandy. I usually use this mode, so my scans look like: bping 192.168.2.x -s -r

-m

Will output a minimal amount of data. Currently only affects network scanning. Useful if you're piping the output to a text file.

-c

Count. Counts the number of times it pings and prints the number in the response.

-n

Number. Will ping that many times and then exit. For example, bping -n=5 google.com will quit after 5 pings.

bping 192.168.1.1 -s -r
Scans the network 192.168.1.X and shows whatever computers are giving replies, and resolve the IP addresses to hostnames whenever possible. I bolded this one since I like it so much.

bping 192.168.1.1 -s -t=.02
Scans the network 192.168.1.X with a timeout of .02 seconds between trying each IP address. Very fast.

bping
Will ping one of Google's DNS servers (8.8.8.8) and beep whenever it doesn't get a reply. Very useful as an internet connection tester. Useful if your internet connection is down and you want to hear a beep when it comes back up. Also very useful for war driving and that sort of thing.

Note that you can also use the full names of al l the switches, since anything after the first character is ignored. For example bping 192.168.1.1 -scan -available is the same as bping 192.168.1.1 -s -a. Also note that the commands can appear in any order.

Screenshots

Here's what bping looks like when scanning a network. In other worrds, the command was "bping -s -r 192.168.2.x". This means it'll scan (-s) the 192.168.2.x network, and attempt to resolve (-r) hostnames.

Updates

- v2.0 (June 2015): changed the default IP for internet testing to one of Google's DNS servers, 8.8.8.8. That should work well anywhere in the world but please report if not.

- v1.8 (January 2011): added the ability to limit the number of pings to a certain number. Useful for batch scripts.

- v1.5 (July 27, 2009) fixed a glitch when using the internet connection tester. There's no longer a long delay when the internet connection is down. Also made the internal system beep sound much less heinous than the old high pitched setting. And fixed a glitch where it would think hyphenated domain names were commandline args.

- v1.4 (July 22, 2009) added the ability to specify a wav file instead of using the stock sound.

- v1.3 (May 18, 2009): added the -d switch, which only beeps when a ping fails. Useful for monitoring intermittent timeouts. Also added the -v switch, which sets the output volume (currently doesn't affect the internal system speaker, only the regular soundcard beep). And added the -c switch, which prints the ping number in the output. And fixed an issue where it used to write to a temp file with every ping, which was silly.